Classical Hero
by strangebloke
Summary: The rage and loathing that Percy felt at the gods for kidnapping him again wasn't going to get in the way of him saving as many people as he could while he was here on this crappy world. At least, that was his plan.
1. Chapter 1

CH1: In which I have no idea what's going on

Let me just say in my defense, even if I had known what the gods were up to, I probably wouldn't have changed a single action had taken. Yeah, I played right into their hands, but when it comes down to it, I don't know what other choices I had.

I guess I'm getting ahead of myself though.

I woke up face first on a dock, the tang of rusted metal strong in the seawater that was flowing through my mouth and nostrils. I lifted my head, and dimly noted a strobing light coming from just over the edge of the dock. I stood, and saw that the light came from a woman, floating in the air above an emty dockyard, unleashing incredible blasts of white light onto the ground below her.

I spotted her targets quickly enough. Demonic figures leapt at her from the shadows, one by one, and one by one she struck them down, turning them to dust or making them explode in fire. The demons themselves looked sort of silly, really. They had the stony red faces and horns, like you'd expect, but they were also all decked out like a bunch of crazy guerilla fighters, complete with grenades, pistols, and body armor. Some of them just sort of appeared near to her in the air and detonated, but they seemed to be having a tough time getting close to her.

So far, she seemed to be doing a pretty good job of keeping them off of her. She always had the option to fly high and away from them, if they pressured her too much, and the dark, combined with her own strobes of light, wasn't doing wonders for the demons' sense of aim.

I reached in my pocket, fumbled for Riptide, and came up empty handed.

The lack of sword made me feel naked, and a little disturbed, I have to admit, but I've dealt with worse handicaps, and besides, this was a dream, right? I distinctly remembered falling asleep in my apartment in New Rome. Overall, the ratio between abductions and too-real-to-be-a-dream dreams was pretty heavily in favor of this not being real, and honestly I didn't give a dream like this too much thought anymore. I walked forward in a daze, trying to get a feeling for what I was looking at. Dreams this vivid were more likely the product of divine intervention than too many nachoes before bed, and I was probably witnessing a fight of some consequence. Or not. The gods had a way of burying you in irrelevant details.

I guess I must have looked like I was high, wandering into a firefight like was. The shining lady noticed me about half a breath before the demons did, and I was nearly as stunned as they were.

"Get out of here!" The lady's voice had a panicked edge to it, as she sent out a blinding flash of light, less destructive than her previous blasts, but much more widespread and bright.

When my vision cleared, I was staring down the barrel of a pistol, held by one of the demons, about twenty feet from me. It took me a fraction of a second to realize that the shining lady had been trying to give me a chance to run for cover, which was about a quarter second after the gun went off in my face.

Of course, before even that happened I was already in motion, instinct and experience moving my body without my mind registering why I needed to. I rolled into a crouch, and saw the demon's arm tracking me, only to be turned into so many dust-bunnies by yet another pillar of light, courtesy of shining lady with a side of yelling.

She paused for a moment in the air, the night deadly quiet except for her heavy breathing and the settling debris. She turned to me, and gestured angrily. "Get out of here. Now. The last thing I need is you becoming a-AGH!" A series of shots rang out from behind a derelict car, and my would-be-protector plummetted and cried out in pain.

At some point in those chaotic few seconds, I decided, dream or no, these monsters were going down.

"Hey, soldier-boy!" I hollered, and felt a pull in my stomach as I pulled up a jet of water and flung him across the parking lot. I sent a jet of water to a nearby window and dusted a second. I spun, and caught the arm of a third who'd been about to pull a pin from the grenades on his belt and flung him across the street.

Any haze that had been in thoughts had fled the scene. I breathed, touched my power, and water, wind and ice answered my call, a whirlwind touching down on the dockyard, surrounding me and the fallen lady. Flickers of lightning danced around the edges of the cyclone as the wind ripped anything smaller than a parked car into the sky and added it to the storm.

Behind me.

I had blocked a bullet with my sword once. I'm not saying that to brag or anything, but it's something I did once upon a time. It isn't anything I can do consistently, of course, but once in a while, when I'm really getting into a fight, I can see a punch coming before it's even thrown. That intuition, combined with a burst of divine speed... it made me unstoppable

I swung my arm at empty air, striking at the demon that I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt would appear. I could parts of another one flowing into place before he was even really there, like water trickling downhill. Strength surge through my veins and time seemed to slow to a crawl.

I barely had time to register the demon's face appearing in front of me before my fist crashed into its temple.

The snap was audible. This demon didn't turn into ash, it just sort of flopped to the ground bonelessly. All around me, the whirlwind fell to the ground in a crackling shower. My smile died on my lips. I dove to the ground, and grabbed the creature's face. It came off. The pinched, utterly still face of a middle-aged Asian man stared back at me.

I fell straight back on my rear, breathing hard. I blinked in shock and scuttled back over to the, uh, corpse. I'm not the greatest on first aid, but when you can't find a pulse and the guy's face is staring down the line of his backbone... yeah, he was gone.

I, Perseus Jackson, son of Poseidon, Hero of Olympus, had just killed a man. Yeah, uh, Oops. I've killed before, don't get me wrong, but I did not like the idea that I could do something like that by accident. Restraint is not something that comes naturally to children of Poseidon. Styx, superstrength is just something that just sort of comes and goes for me. I don't really have any control over it.

A gasp came from the lady, who was valiantly trying to climb to her feet just behind me. "Woah, woah woah take it easy," I stated, sounding way more calm than I felt. "You're hurt, right?" I still couldn't make out much of her appearance, thanks to the strobe effect.

"I'm fine," She coughed, sounding distinctly less than fine. She glanced at the body and winced. "Oni Lee? He's dead?"

I chewed the inside of my cheek. Great first impression here. "Uh, yeah, That... that wasn't intentional. What... what was going on here?"

"You saw pretty much everything that happened. There's a shipment of assorted drugs in a shipping container over there. I was going to burn it, but, well, Oni Lee was there. I got off a lucky flash of light, which messed with his vision and ability to teleport." She coughed. "Honestly though, I'm not a good match for him. I was just about to run when you showed up."

She was fumbling for something, it was hard to tell what. She cursed and it clattered to the ground. One of those ancient Nokia phones everyone has lying around somewhere. I picked it up.

"Hey, I can call the ambulance for you, don't worry about it. You were shot."

"Don't. Give me back the phone."

I lowered her ancient brick of a cell phone and bit back a smart reply. "Yeah? You may not have noticed, but you're bleeding out here." She had dimmed the light show to the point where I could look at her without it being painful, and frankly it did anything for her presence. She was short, mousy, and somewhere north of thirty. The growing patch of red on her arm wasn't much of a fashion statement either. Not that I'm one to criticize appearance, but she looked like she'd just walked through a few bad miles of Tartarus.

She sighed. "Vest took the first two shots. Anyway, if I'm bleeding out, so are you."

A red stain was blossoming just above my collar bone. "Huh. He must have tagged me with that first shot."

"Come on, give me my phone back." The woman tried to sit up and managed it with only a few gasps of pain. She had been hit in in the arm twice, and while individually neither of the wounds were grave, I could guess they didn't tickle.

I handed it over. "Fine. Why can't we use an ambulance again?"

She stared at me with tired eyes as she dialed a number. "You have no idea who I am, do you?" She paused. "Look, The PRT will be here in a minute, and I don't get along with them. I have an... acquaintance who will fix me up with fewer questions. If you don't want the PRT asking you a bunch of questions... I can try and get you help as well. Provided..." She shined a light in my face. "I can get someone to fix you up too." She placed the phone to her ear. "This is Purity. A friendly and I are injured. ABB territory, yeah. Oni Lee is down, so you owe us one. Come on, I..."

I sighed, and surveyed the scene. We had trashed the dockyard good. Purity's light pillars left huge craters in the ground, and the demon's grenades had scattered shrapnel to the four winds. Not demons. His name was Oni Lee. I had not helped anything with that whirlwind of mine, and I counted three flipped cars and a toppled crane, besides the gaping hole I had left in the wall of the building to my right. I heard sirens in the distance.

I wondered idly if the mist would cover this or not. Oni Lee and Purity seemed human, for the most part, but they clearly weren't normal humans. Purity at least had not had her vision obscured. What in Hades' name was going on here? Was this like that thing with the House of Life?

"...Fine. See you there." Purity hung up and clutched her side. "Oh God." She winced, and looked up at me. "I've arranged for help, if you're willing to take it. It's just a question of how much you trust the PRT, really."

I shrugged. "No real point. Wound's already healed. You need help getting to the meet-up place?"

Purity shook her head slowly, and gave me an appraising look. "I appreciate the help, but if you don't need medical attention, it's probably best to avoid my... friends." She paused. "I appreciate that you didn't try to turn me in, as well."

I laughed. "Yeah, I guess." I threw out a hand. "It's Purity, right? The name's Percy. Should I be turning you in?"

She shook my hand and almost laughed, but it turned into a cough halfway. "I used to be a villain, but I'm trying out this independent hero thing." She winced. "You can see about how well that's going." She raised an eyebrow at my orange t-shirt. "You truly are new to this game, aren't you?"

I coughed. Where in Hades was I? "Yeah, the super suit's in the laundry. Real embarrassing." She smiled at that. "I'm really new to this scene."

Purity turned to fly away. "The heroes will be here shortly. Obviously I'm not sticking around, so I understand if you'd rather leave than face the PRT's question. But I should warn you, If the heroes make an enemy of you, that isn't a bridge that's easily unburned, and you may find yourself between a rock and hard place." She looked away for a moment, pensive. "Some of us would give an awful lot to go back."

I didn't know quite what to say to that, and I didn't get the chance to think of something. She was gone, flying over the rooftops, a slight jerkiness to her path. The cops hadn't showed up yet, which I guess made sense considering that this was not exactly the nicest part of town. I mean, I hoped this wasn't the nice part of town. I bit my lip. There was a lot to process, and I had never been the best at this. 'Brockton Bay' wasn't a city I'd ever heard of, and the way the lady had been talking, it sounded like I'd dropped into some Dark Horse/Marvel/DC comics knockoff world.

Which was awesome except for the part that I might be far, far farther from home than I'd ever been before. But there was one way to be sure.

I hopped up onto an old ship that had more rust than steel on it, felt my hopes turn into so much vapor. I was roughly a few miles outside of what in my world would be Atlantic City, New Jersey, which was very much so not a city called Brockton Bay.

I sighed, and started looking for a homeless person who could give me pointers on this whole deal.

That was when the heroes showed up.

Thanks for reading. Definitely new to the CrW scene, and this is the first place I'm posting this story, so criticism is appreciated.


	2. I Rearrange Some Office Furniture

I watched the 'hero' coming on the scene with disinterest. He looked much more like your traditional superhero than Purity or Oni Lee had, with red racing stripes meeting in a 'v' on the chest of his super suit. He was fast, far faster than I'd been since I'd lost the curse, but he slowed to a walk when he saw the damage. There was a part of me that was a little excited. I was going to be running with honest-to-god superheros! But most of me could barely be moved to care. The gods had hijacked me.

"You're not getting away from me. Never again."

Again. They'd hijacked me again, without so much as a 'please.' I was livid. I'd been told once that my flaw was personal loyalty; that I'd let the world drown in blood, so long as it meant my I could get a raft for my friends; so long as they got to live. Right now, I felt the truth of that statement. The last time I'd been shanghaid, it had turned out well enough. We'd saved the world. Yay us. This weird not-earth was likely home to some world-ending primordial thing that I'd been hijacked to kill, but I could hardly care less at the moment. They'd taken Annabeth from me. Again. Annabeth, the love of my life. Annabeth, the wise girl. My tactician, my boss, my girlfriend, my best friend. Annabeth who had serious issues with people leaving her and had been thrown into a bad place the last time they'd done this.

They'd taken me away from her again, and this time they hadn't had the decency to wipe my memories first.

I sighed. I'd never been much one for angst. If you didn't keep moving forward, life would move on without you. I held my position on top of the ship for now, and while he hadn't spotted me yet, I got a pretty good feeling that if I didn't make a decision soon, he was going to make it for me.

It was a weird thing for me, to think about owning up to what I'd done. It had never really been an option, before. The mist took that decision away from me. In some ways, I resented that. I'd accomplished a lot in my 17 years, but to everyone on the mortal side I was just a dyslexic who had barely avoided dropping out of highschool and was trying to get into a college without indenturing himself into slavery. On the other hand, I kind of liked living a more low key life. I didn't want to think how the Rachel Elizabeth Dare situation would have turned out if I had been a celebrity. I didn't like to think about what the public would have made of Mt. St. Helens. Even if I had wanted attention, I got plenty of hero-worship from horses and fish.

I was pretty confident I could stay out of the public eye here too, if I wanted. I could retreat to the water right now, with no one any the wiser. Sure, I was homeless, but that didn't matter when I had all the bounty of the ocean at my disposal. If I got lonely, I could hang out on the surface for a while, maybe interfere with gang activity on the shoreline. The gods would set me on whatever quest they had for me soon enough.

I jumped from the boat, nearly forty feet to the ground, and rode a jet of water to the ground. Ultimately I was faced with a choice between action and inaction, and I'd never been good at sitting still.

The red-suited man darted away before I touched the ground, presumably to go for help. He wasn't gone long. A pair of monstrous bikes rolled onto the scene, accompanied by Running Man.

A vaguely middle-eastern woman in military fatigues rode the first bike, a normal Harley, and produced an M-16 as she pulled to a stop, pointing it at the ground in front of her. The other bike still managed to produce a deep rumble despite being one of those tron light-cycle things. I got a good look at its rider, in bright blue iron man armor and hoisting a massive halberd, and stifled a laugh.

See, there's this thing you learn about when you spend time with hyper-intelligent wolf deities. It's sort of animal dominance and sort of a bunch of other stuff, but it boils down to presence. It's the sort of thing that makes everyone listen when you speak, the kind of thing that makes people stay out of your way when they might fight you otherwise. Not-Compensating-For-Anything here had it in spades, knew it, and had clearly built his armor to reinforce the 'do not mess with me' vibe.

Next to the gods and terrors of the night I regularly disrespected, it was almost cute.

I spoke first, my hands in the pockets of my hoodie, my stance relaxed. "Hey I just kind of stumbled into this whole fight, but I killed this Oni Lee guy by accident, so I thought I should give a statement, come clean."

Running Man zipped over to check the body, and whirled back to the Iron Man wannabe to report. "The John Doe is the right build, and he's, uh, definitely dead."

"Check the perimeter to see if newcomer here has any friends hiding, Velocity. Try to find what they were fighting over." Velocity raced off and Big Blue grunted, looking me in the eyes. Well, I think he did. The visor made it a bit hard to tell. "You're a new cape? Not bothering with a mask, I see." There was nothing threatening in his words or tone, but his posture was that of a cat circling its prey before a pounce. Army chick was circling me, and pretty soon I'd be flanked.

I consciously made an effort to look as non-threatening as possible. Unlike Big Blue here, I was actually interested in making friends. "I guess? I mean, I was in this fight, so yes. Oh! And speedy! That ship over there has drugs or something in it. Not sure."

Carry-a-big-stick waved my information aside. "You'll come with us for questioning. The PRT isn't friendly to killer capes, but it's the best course of action for you in the long run, unless you are, as this fight might suggest, working with Purity and the Empire. If such is the case, I suggest you surrender."

I shook my head. "Look, I'm new to this, but I'm definitely interested in being a hero, even if I don't know who these people here today were or who you are. Obviously I screwed this up, but frankly I'm not even sure how I killed the guy, and even if I was..." I gestured to the blast marks that the grenade had left behind. "He was playing for keeps, and I'm not bulletproof. Self defense is a thing here, right?"

I'd let drop that I didn't know anything. 'Amnesia' was a pretty weak explanation, I knew, but it was as close to the truth as I could get without sounding pants-on-head crazy. Army chick perked up at my words, and turned sharply to Big Blue, sharing a nod with him. I feigned disinterest, but my mind was racing. What was going on here?

Halberd guy sighed. "I doubt a jury would rule against you in the case of self defense, but you still need to come with us, particularly since you don't have intact memories. If you're worried about our legitimacy, a police car will be arriving shortly." He regarded me levelly. "Unless you don't remember what a police car looks like?"

I smiled. "Big, blue, festive red lights? Sort of like you but with more humor? Yeah, I remember them."

Combat Boots cleared her throat before her boss responded. "There is precedent for allowing someone with a spotted history a probationary placement in the protectorate. Given Oni Lee's power and his willingness to kill, I can almost guarantee you'll be given such an option. If you joined today, you might be a full Protectorate member within a few months." She paused. "Or a wards member. Whichever is appropriate. Memory loss is also precedented, and we'll sort you based on the best guess we can make of your age."

That... that sounded like a pretty fair deal, all things considered, but I wasn't eager to attach myself to an unknown bureaucracy just yet. I didn't want to swear fealty to another Octavian if I could help it. I nodded at an armored transport that rolled up. "I'm not sure about that. But I still need to make a statement, so I'll go with you." I nodded at an armored car that was pulling up. "That my ride?"

It could have been worse, I guess. They didn't cuff or blindfold me, but they did strap me down on a chair in the back of the armored car, with Army Chick on hand in case I tried anything.

"Jeez," I commented, as she closed the door behind her and buckled in across from me in the back of the van. "A guy might almost feel welcome."

She sighed. "It's unpleasant, but necessary. It wouldn't be the first time a villain tried to infiltrate the Protectorate, posing as a case 53."

I blinked. "What?"

She sighed. "It's what we call people who show up with powers, but no memories. They tend to be... monstrous in form." She let that sink in. "You have any weird tattoos?"

I rolled up my sleeve and showed her the SPQR tattoo the Romans had left there. She frowned, and shot me a questioning glance. I shrugged.

She shook her head. "Sorry, where are my manners? I'm Miss Militia. The speedster is Velocity, and Armsmaster leads the heroes in the city. We're pretty well-known, so I keep forgetting how strange this is for you. Do you have a name you can remember, or have you come up with something we can call you?"

"Riptide." The word left my mouth before she had finished talking. I had put a small amount of thought into playing superhero for a while. A brief while, since I hadn't had more than a few months without some crisis hanging over my head since I disintegrated my math teacher a few years ago.

Miss Militia's eyes crinkled with a smile. "That's not a very heroic-sounding name."

"But cool, right?"

"...I think that's best left to the PR department."

I'd been worried that army chick would turn out to be an older, shorter Clarisse, but she turned out to be the next best thing to wikipedia I was likely to get for a bit. She explained the basics to me. The Protectorate, the government oversight group, the major gangs of the city, and who'd be gunning for me.

Apparently, the guy I'd accidentally killed was sidekick to the most powerful, most murderous cape in the city. Some things never change, I guess.

She was halfway through a thorough explanation of the capabilities of the Triumvirate when I interrupted her. "Hey, you said some of the case 53s were monstrous. Do you have a list of the ones that aren't?"

She blinked. "Case 53s aren't common knowledge. If they aren't monstrous, there's a good chance that they wouldn't get classified; It'd be impossible to distinguish them from other capes with memory loss."

I nodded glumly. I was considering the possibility that Annabeth or someone might have been sent here too, and I had entertained the hope that she would end up a hero by the same route I was using. But that would be too easy, wouldn't it?

The van stopped, and I was ushered through a series of winding passageways until they brought me to a table in an interrogation room that had been pleasantly disguised as an office. It even had a little potted plant in the corner. I was alone for a moment before Armsmaster clanked in, and they gave me a cup of rich cocoa to sip on. He sat down, and folded his hands on the table between us.

"Miss Militia informs me that you're calling yourself Riptide? You don't seem eager to give yourself a good reputation."

"Your top hero is named after an inhuman spectre." I smiled. "It's a name. A few weeks, and people will be like 'deadly shoreline current? what's that?'"

Armsmaster ignored my dashing sense of humor, which only further solidified my opinion of him as a humorless grouch. "As head of the Protectorate here in Brockton Bay, I'm going to take your official statement. Tell me what happened."

I pretty much gave it to him straight. I didn't trust him much, but I also didn't see anything that I'd been through so far that could come back to haunt me. "I'm still not sure how Oni Lee's powers worked. I actually thought Purity was under attack by some kind of monstrous mob at first. I had no idea it was a single human individual."

"You got lucky, then." Armsmaster stated. "Oni Lee's a teleporter who leaves a clone behind whenever he moves. You could have very easily died if things had been a little different."

I nodded. That answered some questions, but opened others. There were a lot of things about that fight that didn't make sense, like how Lee hadn't been able to get close enough to Purity to kill her.

Armsmaster watched me closely. "So, you have powerful hydrokenesis, strength, speed and durability. Is there anything else we should know about?"

I paused. I had a truly ridiculous set of abilities, looking at me as a super hero. Horse control, fish control, clairvoyant dreams, that weird bad luck curse thing I used on Gabe a few times...

"Nothing important. I have a lot of lesser powers, but they don't come up much."

Armsmaster was quiet a moment. "And you woke up in that dockyard tonight? With no memories."

"Pretty much. This is all new to me."

Another pause. I got the feeling he was trying to unsettle me. So far it hadn't had much result.

"Are you a liar by habit, or is it something you're trying out now?"

Well, there it was. I sighed. "Got me. The lost memories angle made more sense than the truth. I was hoping it would speed things up here. You have a lie detector in your suit, or is that an ability of yours?"

He pounded the table with his fist, leaning over the table at me. "This isn't a joke, Riptide. Everything you've done since you showed up has been suspicious. Working with Purity, killing Oni Lee, and now you're lying about your past and powerset? Who are you, really?"

I bit back a sharp reply, and made visor contact with him. This outburst had been calculated, calculated to make me give something away or give him cause to detain me. I wasn't sure what he was hoping to uncover, but I couldn't afford to take the bait. Plus, I don't like falling for people's traps on principal. I kept cool and grimaced. I'd faced down Tartarus himself, I could deal with this. "Percy Jackson. That name means nothing to you, and I've given my statement. I'm not required to answer all of your questions."

Armsmaster sat up straight, pulling his shoulders back in disgust. "If you want a career in the Protectorate, you do. We don't allow just anyone to join us."

"Well, I'm not just anyone. I'm no one, and maybe I don't want to join after all. I've made my statement, can I go now?"

If it was possible for a voice to literally drip with anger, he would have had a puddle of hateful juices covering the table by this point. "You're still an ongoing suspect in a murder trial, Riptide. We can hold you for most of a week without even pressing charges. And if you think you're going to hide something from us by being obstinate, think again, because when this goes to trial your whole life will be put out on display for the public to dissect to their heart's content. I should warn you, too. The local PRT representative hates independent capes like you and would just as soon see in the birdcage as outside of it, regardless of whether you were justified. The only thing you're accomplishing by your obstinacy is that you're making an enemy of me." Armsmaster paused for effect. "That isn't something you want to do."

I snorted. "What, you mean, you're not my enemy now? Does that make us friends?"

His teeth flashed. "Very Funny. I don't-"

I cut him off. "You don't have friends? Not surprising. But I wasn't even going to lie, initially. You all just assumed I had lost my memory, which made for a simpler story than the truth."

"You led us on." Armsmaster stated calmly. "I take it you remember your old life? Your old name?"

I noted how quickly his anger had vanished. Of course it had. I was being cooperative now. It wasn't that his feelings had been hurt by my lie earlier, it was that he thought that by being angry he could get what he wanted; he could uncover some threat. Jerk. "Every minute of it." I stated. "But I don't remember you. Or Brockton Bay, or any of the other heroes."

Armsmaster's expression became stone. "So. You're insane, gifted with lazy-guided amnesia, or you're from another universe"

"I'll take another universe for two-hundred." I leaned back in my chair. This might be easier than I expected. "It's the conclusion I came to. Back home, where I went to sleep last night, I guess you could say that I'm a pretty experienced hero, despite my age. But 'hero' means something completely different there. We're not in the public eye like you guys are, and from what Miss Militia told me, we get our powers through very different means."

"And how would you say you arrived?"

I sighed. This was the tricky part. It wasn't a huge jump from Greek heroes to superheroes, but explaining the gods? "My world is run by powerful, um, beings. At best, they're petty and childish. At worst, they're primordial assholes who want to genocide everyone and everything. I work for the less bad guys, I guess, though I wouldn't call them good guys. My guess is they sent me here on a mission and forgot to tell me about it."

"You're from a world ruled by powerful capes, and you're here at the behest of the less evil ones? Is that supposed to reassure me?"

"Sorry, I forgot the goal of this conversation was making you feel better. Anyway, I don't have much choice. I'm their go-to errand boy, and sometimes they don't consult me first. This wouldn't be the first time they'd shanghaid me to some far distant place for some stupid quest."

"So you have a mission? A mission given to you by strange, otherworldly entities? That seems like a fairly glaring item to omit from your earlier statement."

I sighed. "Look, they didn't tell me anything, OK? You're dealing with me. If I find out the mission they have for me is 'kill everyone' or something then I just won't do it. I'm not a some automation or slave. Styx, I'm not even completely confident it was them who kidnapped me. It could have been something else. One of their enemies, maybe, or maybe..."

"Something from our end." There was a dead finality to his tone. This conversation was over. "I need to consult with my superiors. I wouldn't recommend you try to leave until I get back."

I nodded, and let him leave, slumping back into my chair. He hadn't been the slightest bit skeptical of my story, which was good, except that he'd also tensed up at the mention of me being from another universe, even more than he had been when he thought I was a possible gang member. Whatever from their end could bring people in from other universes, he didn't like it.

The minutes ticked by and my ADHD was driving me up the walls, nearly literally. I started reaching out for the water flowing through the pipes in the walls, and blinked.

They were cutting off the water to the pipes! Not just turning off the pressure, but actually emptying all of the pipes within fifty feet of the holding cell/office, which my limited understanding of plumbing tells me is pretty bothersome to do. Now that I knew what to look for, I noted that one of those dixie-cup cooler things was being carried out of the room next to the room I was in.

They were taking away my resources, which could only mean one thing: They were prepping for me to fight them. That could mean... anything really. They could be prepping to give me some really sad news, getting ready to throw me in prison, or about to fill the room with toxic gas. I could sit around and wait until they came in and explained things. So far they hadn't seemed too crazy. Or I could fight.

I sighed. "Never was too good at sitting still." I muttered.

This was normally where I'd draw Riptide and shock everyone by having a weapon concealed on me. I suppose I'd have to settle for the next best thing.

There wasn't a ton of water flowing through the piping in the heavy steel wall, but there was enough. I drew in power, a lot of it, and threw it against the piping in the wall. The building shuddered. I threw power against the wall again, and this time it buckled, steel tearing with an awful shriek.

My shoulder slammed into the wall with all the force I could muster, and I tumbled through to the other side , the scream of tearing metal filling my ears. A faint green light shimmered and before I knew what I was doing, I'd batted away Miss Militia's hand, which had been holding a submachine gun to my head. Where did she keep all these weapons?

As soon as I had my feet under me, I bolted from the room. I heard the crackle of the sub machine gun behind me, and stumbled as a sharp pain hit my upper thigh. A thin jet of water lashed out in response, knocking Miss Militia off of her feet and giving me a chance to find mine.

I really had no clue where I was headed, so I decided to just plow through walls in a straight line until I got to the street. Most of the walls in the building weren't as heavily reinforced as the walls to the interrogation office had been, and as I ran I pulled on every source of water I could find. The emergency fire system went off. The walls around me exploded as the pipes in them burst. Sinks, toilets, faucets, unattended solo cups, they all answered my call, and I rode the wave through one expensive looking office, and then another.

I could hear the sound of my pursuers. Miss Militia had regained her feet and was pouring firepower down the hallway I had carved through three flimsy walls. My water swelled behind me as a shield, and I had to hope it was enough.

"Sorry about the mess!" I called out to a harried accountant looking guy as I ruined his filing system. Man, was I an asshole or what?

My wave crashed against the next wall and... stopped There weren't any pipes in this wall, and that fact, combined with it superior construction, gave me pause. This was the outer wall to the base, sure enough, but I doubted I'd be able to just break it with brute force the way I had the others.

Thankfully, I had completed the fifth grade, and knew a thing or two about water and structures. Cryokenesis wasn't my strongest skill set, but you could only get so good with water before you figured it out. I threw my wave against the wall, but this time, as it hit, I drew the heat from it, flash freezing it. I threw the heat back into it, slammed the water into the wall again, and turned it into ice.

Bullets rained at me from behind. Most of them missed, thanks to the swirling shield of water that covered my exit path, but as I focused on destroying the wall, a few shots slipped through and hot pain coursed through my lower back.

I grit my teeth, and the wall exploded outward in a torrent of ice and water, carrying me with it. I landed on sweet, sweet pavement, and I swallowed a breath of fresh air.

It was all I got. I counted three figures in front of me. Armsmaster I recognized, but the man in the gladiator costume and the woman in a blue and white catsuit were new ones. I realized belatedly that while I'd felt pretty good about the speed of my escape, I'd given them more than enough time to regroup from my out burst and ambush me.

"Stand down, Riptide." Armsmaster's voice left no room for disagreement, and he held out his halberd in warning, "This is a fight you can't win. We just need to hold you in quarantine until we're sure everything is alright."

It briefly occurred to me that I might have overreacted. But there were just too many things I didn't know here. What was quarantine? Why had they expected me to fight? Would they ever let me out again?

Gladiator cracked his knuckles. Blue girl maintained a fighting stance, circling to the side, and somewhere, hundreds of feet behind me, Miss Militia drew up bead on my back.

I couldn't help but smile. It might be a different universe, but some things never changed.

For a moment, we just stood there. No doubt they hoped I would surrender. They had me dead to rights, after all, and there wasn't a simple way out of this. I was facing three unknown warriors, a doubtful option for peace, and a gun at my back, in addition to two or three bullet wounds which I really felt should be hurting more just about now. What would Annabeth recommend in such a situation?

"Eat my pants!" I shouted as I hosed Armsmaster over.

A lot of things happened at once. Gladiator shouted thunderously and I felt my feet leave the ground as I was thrown backward. My senses rang from the impact, and I tried to get my feet under me before I landed, but that dandy plan left out the other hero, whose suit exploded in light as she rushed forward.

She slammed a fist into my throat as I fell, driving me into the ground and setting me up for a powerful kick to my chest. Come on, Percy, you're better than this, I groaned, sweeping her legs out from under her. I rose, water lifting me upwards and gathering around me in a rushing torrent, carrying me away from the fight. The gladiator's shouts rippled against the wave, and while they were as loud as ever, the water shielded me from their force

The ocean was visible now, perhaps five blocks away. It may as well have been halfway across the country, as far as I was concerned. My surge of water was falling away quickly, as water tends to do, and once it was gone I'd be on foot. Against two speedsters, I didn't care for my odds.

Thankfully, I didn't get the chance to worry about that, because before I was a hundred feet away, pain surged through my system, and I fell to the ground, water dispersing around me and trickling into a storm drain. Armsmaster crouched nearby, electricity spitting and popping from the butt of his halberd. I had no idea how he had gotten ahead of me, but then, he certainly hadn't become leader due to his kind and bubbly personality. "You never had a chance." He stated, firing a dart from his wrist at my chest. "This is for the best. You don't know what damage you might have caused."

Heh. I thought as the dart struck home. He's definitely not the warm and fuzzy one. My vision darkened, and I could feel numbness spreading through my system. I drew myself to my feet blearily, and Armsmaster didn't try to stop me. Miss Militia, the glowing lady, and the guy with the voice powers jogged up, ready for round two. I wobbled on my feet. Velocity had zipped up at some point too.

"Get ready to catch him when he drops. Last thing I want is a news reel showing a kid being taken in with a bloody mess for a face."

I looked to the sky, and smiled dimly. I felt good. Dawn was just starting to break over the rooftops, and it looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. I felt cold metal settle over my wrists, and looked down in shock. Velocity must have tagged me with cuffs at some point. I sighed and looked Armsmaster in the eyes.

"Hey, Armsmaster?" I stated, spots flickering across my vision.

Armsmaster watched me impassively, ready to tag me with another dart if I so much as twitched. "Hm?"

"Did you eat my pants?"

"What?"

I threw myself backwards, and felt the air of another dart brush past my face as I fell. Water surged from the nearby storm drain, knocking the iron bars away as I dove into the sewer, where the cold comfort of water surrounded me again.

Thanks for reading. Sorry for harping on the 'Armaster is a dick' train again.


	3. I Get Free Food Without Making Friends

I threw my head back and screamed in frustration. Quietly, of course, because I was in a library, and I'm not a savage. Idly I wondered why I couldn't have been dropped in a universe where people in America wrote in ancient Greek. The words swam around the webpage every time I tried to read it, but I managed to deduce two general principles:

Point A: I'm screwed.

Point B: Everyone else is as well.

Powers are nice, but in my experience, they just make you a target. Powers make you stronger, but with strength comes reputation, and reputation just paints that target bigger. So, you did good with the Minotaur, Percy, here's a Chimera! Sooner or later someone else is stronger, or smarter, or just luckier, and you wind up dead. A good example here was Oni Lee. He'd been a bad character, but I'd been better, but that victory meant his boss, the biggest and baddest in the city, was after me now. If I beat Lung, I'd probably get the attention of these Slaughterhouse nine psychos or the Triumvirate, or an endbringer or something. My only hope in the long run was to join a team. The same rules that apply to individuals apply to groups of individuals, but a group could cover a lot more bases and spread the rep out a little. Plus, if I was going to go down, I intended to do it with some friends at my side. Back home, between the camps, my monstrous half-siblings, my mortal family and even a few of the gods, I'd had a pretty robust support group. Here, I had limited options.

On the one hand, I could join a gang. Here in Brockton Bay, that meant either the drug-addled losers the merchants, or the drug-addled losers who were also Nazis, the Empire. There were also the Azn Bad Boys, but considering I'd killed the second in command, and hadn't ever been mistaken for Asian, I figured my odds were slim to none.

Although, I supposed, I'd been called 'Mediterranean' before, and part of Asia technically does border the Mediterranean. I thought about that for a good five seconds. Nahhh.

There were other, smaller groups. Uber and Leet would probably take me, but I didn't really think they'd do much to help me. Faultline's crew was pretty sweet, but they were also interested in money, and, uh, Lung had a pretty significant bounty on my head at the moment.

On the other hand, I'd quite possibly been summoned here by the next best thing to a fallen angel, and New Wave or one of the corporate teams would throw me into quarantine faster than you could say 'paranoioa.' My face was all over the news, and while my identity as a transdimensional tourist wasn't public knowledge, the PRT had listed me as a 'possible Canberrra Quarantine escapee.' Honestly, I couldn't completely be sure that they were wrong, except that I didn't remember Angel-girl messing with my memories.

I wasn't sure if that made me feel better or worse.

Which brings me to point two. These 'Endbringer' yahoos seemed pretty terrifying even by my standards. They weren't dying, they weren't trying as hard as they could have been, and new ones keept showing up. These facts combined pretty much meant that humanity was screwed, no matter what way you sliced it. Reading through the reports... it sounded like a bunch of mortals and half-bloods trying to take down Typhon or something.

I held my head in my hands. This whole thing was like a game of Russian Roullete, only all the barrels were loaded.

The endbringers, oddly enough, were my only ray of hope. 'Humanity being totally screwed' sounded like a good reason to go on a quest, and was so far my best theory as to why the gods had dropped me here. Assuming it wasn't this creepy angel thing that had dropped me off, killing the endbringers seemed to be my best bet at getting home. Which was a great idea, but I had a few details to figure out first. Details that were fifty feet tall and wreathed in lightning.

I looked back at the table and blinked. A scrap of paper sat on the desk just in front of the keyboard, along with a gift card.

 _Saw you on the news. Curious to meet such a celebrity._

 _~A friend 3_

The gift card was to some place called 'Fugly Bob's.' A quick internet search (which, by the way, was swiftly becoming my new favorite thing) revealed Bob's to be a burger joint near the bay that specialized in heart attacks with fries.

This 'friend' was going out of their way to make me feel comfortable, which meant either I really did have a friend, or that they were laying a trap. My gut told me to trust them, which wasn't surprising, given my hunger. I wasn't literally starving. I'd dropped a full two-thirds of my mortal net worth, about twenty bucks, at a chicken joint shortly after I'd come to after the fight. I can heal bullet wounds, bruises, poison, and throw water around like it's going out of style, but using my powers that much takes a lot out of me. Sleeping in the saltwater of the Bay had done me good, and I did have a few drachma I could turn in for gold, but at the moment, a free meal sounded awesome, and if it was a trap... Well, I'd learn who wanted to trap me.

I was careful to stick to heavily populated streets as I walked, and mercifully I didn't have far to go. As soon as I caught sight of Bob's, I knew the owner was a man after my own heart, and my arteries quavered in fear. I ordered enough food to stop my heart three times over and slumped into a chair.

I didn't have long to wait. I'd barely gotten through my first burger when a brutish redhead with an expression you could crush granite on walked over.

"I'm Rachel. I'm supposed to take you to the others."

"Can it wait a minute? I'm eating. Also, not following you if you take me down some dark alley."

She rolled her eyes and clenched her teeth. "Look, just come out to the beach. The others won't stop riding me if I scare you off." With that, she got up and left. Huh.

On the one hand, it was doubtful that these were good guys in any sense. On the other hand, I was stinking curious now and wanted to see what was up.

Once the burgers had departed this earth and gone off to burgery heaven, I set out for the beach, which had about as much traffic on it as you might expect on an overcast, blustery day in March. There weren't a lot of places for a super secret meeting, so I headed over to a big building that I guess was supposed to be a public changing area, but was covered top to bottom in graffiti.

My 'friends' were waiting out there.

The first one sat up against the building, leaning back casually as if to say, 'yeah, I always hang out on the beach in crappy weather.' He was a big guy, all in leathers with a creepy black skull biker helmet. If I'd met him back home, I probably would have pegged him as Ares , Thanatos, or some monster incognito. He'd done a nice job with the armor.

Speaking of monsters, Granite-face was petting this huge lizard tailed thing with bone ridges coming out in all the wrong places. The messy monster slobbered at me in greeting, and I nodded back. He was an ugly slobber machine, but I'd made friends with weirder monsters. Granite face had donned a rottweiler mask as well, which I guess was the sum total of her 'costume.'

The other girl, a blonde had a more traditional spandex suit on, with a simple domino mask. Her skin tight clothing showed off a thin, curvy body that probably made some guys go crazy. She smiled winningly as I showed up, and nudged the fourth member, who sat up straight and ruffled his curly, jet-black hair. Curly was in ren-faire gear: tights, sceptre, and cape; the whole schebang. They both looked soft and unathletic, which maybe prevented me from taking them as seriously as I should have. Overall, the supervillain vibe wasn't really something I was feeling all that strong. Even the dog monster had a sort of charm to it, now that I looked at it more.

"Happy you came," motor-cycle helmet stated. "We don't like sending Bitch out on this sort of thing, but she's the one who doesn't have an identity to hide."

I laughed. "So, this is where you tell me how you're going to take over the world?"

"No." Helmet stated, and threw a backpack out on the sand. "This is where we tell you how you can make a shit-load of cash with minimal risk."

I opened the bag, and found that it contained a, uh, a lot of money. I didn't bother to count it; I just set it down and licked my lips.

Blondie nodded at me. "Five grand. That's what we're offering as a signing bonus to join the Undersiders, in addition to a fifth of whatever we take in, which means hundreds of thousands of dollars."

"Which, by the way, is a lot more than I was offered," Curly noted. "Some people have no appreciation for my talents."

Helmet sighed. "Anyway, we're the Undersiders. We're a team built around getting in, getting out, and keeping a low profile. I'm the team leader, and I go by Grue. Tattletale here does the prep work for our ventures. Bitch brings the muscle and the getaway vehicles, and Regent here mostly just collects a paycheck."

Regent sniffed. "I'm the sexy one, clearly."

I squatted on the sand. "So what is this? Highschool is seriously this bad that you're all turning to villainy? The drama club was too cliquey?"

Bitch glowered and Tattletale laughed. "Come on, you're younger than Bitch or Grue."

"Yeah, but I'm not playing hooky by choice."

Tattletale's reply was cut off by Grue's hand. "We all have our reasons. But we represent your best bet. Assuming you don't want to go into quarantine, you can't go to the wards. Tattletale tells us you're not with the Empire yet, which means that you'll be a target for recruitment sooner rather than later. They don't ask nicely like us, and they're kindly compared to Lung, who's put a bounty on your head. It's big enough that it's got Faultline's attention, and Coil doesn't employ capes. That leaves us. Well, us, the Merchants, and Uber and Leet. So us."

They were pretty much right, I figured, but I wasn't going to join a gang. "Nice of you to take me on. Kind of throws the whole minimal risk thing out the window though."

Grue winced, which seemed to amuse Regent immensely. "Grue agrees with you." He cackled. "He voted against letting you on the team."

"Thanks Regent." Grue's discomfort was clear."Everyone else wanted you on. Even Bitch, and that never happens. " He shifted his position. "Look, I don't like the heat, but we're not doing you any favors. We saw the vids, same as anyone. We don't have many friends in this town, and if someone like Kaiser comes after us, we need someone who can throw down. Frankly, we're perfect for you. You get to lay low, bank some cash, and fall off the PRT's shitlist."

I watched a gull peck at a piece of bread just by the changing house, oblivious to everything human. "Nah," I stated. "Not my style. I like the hero title better."

Regent and Bitch tensed suddenly, like they were afraid I was going to suddenly turn on them and take their lunch money. Tattletale just nodded sadly while Grue seemed more relieved than anything.

Grue started to say something, but Tattletale cut him off. "You were a hero back in... wherever you came from, weren't you?"

I laughed. "Different, uh, idiom, I guess, but yeah. Not joining you guys. I don't know. I'll figure it out." the beach was quiet for a moment, except for the waves on the shore. What would I do? I was probably screwed, I knew, but that had never stopped me before. A smile crept its way onto my face. "Heh. Actually, I think I just decided how I want to play this." I rose to my feet. "Starting now, I'm building my own team. I don't care what we get called, but we'll be heroes. Real ones. I'll help anyone, no matter how shitty a hand they've been dealt and no matter how ridiculous the odds."

Tattletale winced. "Statistically speaking, that's not a strategy that's going to end well for you."

Grue shook his head. "So, this make us enemies then? Sure we can't convince you to join up?"

I sighed. "You guys... I get you. You're at where I was a few years back. Life sucks and powers are a way to get away from all that. Maybe it's hard to even think of people without powers as real people. Maybe it's just fun to play villain. But honestly that's a pretty empty path, and people without powers are worth every bit as much as you are. So no, I can't join up. But if you're ever in a bad way and need a way out, I'll do what I can. I'm guessing if you found a way to contact me this time you can figure it out again."

"Wow," snorted Regent. "Honestly? You'll save us?" He laughed. "With your attitude, you're going to be the one who needs saving."

Grue's face was unreadable behind the mask, but his posture said he was about ready to strangle the other kid.

"Oh leave off it, Grue," Regent groaned. "You honestly believe this guy?"

I tossed the bag of money back. "Don't believe me. Just watch."


	4. I Try Out This Cape Thing

The door exploded inwards in a torrent of water, sending half a dozen gang members tumbling. I churned the waters, making it impossible for them to regain feet. One plucky soul in a sleeveless t-shirt and a-ok, that was a really cool dragon tattoo- had been sitting on a pile of crates when I broke the door down, keeping him out of the wash. He produced a pistol and started firing at me.

Dragon Tattoo the Plucky Gangster was maybe sixty feet from me when he started firing, and I closed the gap before he had gotten the third shot off. I crushed his gun hand in mine and shot him a winning smile. "Odd way to offer a man a handshake, but nice to meetcha!" Great thing about fighting mortals? You get to be such a badass.

Plucky started cursing me out in some language I didn't understand. My hand rose, gesturing for silence as I kicked over a box filled with white powder in little plastic baggies. Score. That warranted a fist pump. I'd been following a group of people wearing ABB colors, but it took an hour or more of listening to them before I figured out that a few dealers were meeting up here to pick up their wares for the week. I sort of realized that I should lay off on the ABB and focus on the others gangs, but they were just so easy to target out here in the docks. Plus, their name could have been better.

"Hey, Plucky, can I borrow your phone?"

"Go to hell!"

"Ah, Nah. Been there. Weather is awful." Plucky hadn't volunteered his phone, so I just took it and swapped out his SIM card for the one in the phone Annabeth had gotten me for my 17th birthday.

I dialed up the precinct and waited. There was no reason to clog up the emergency lines for what was a pretty resolved situation. The officer, or receptionist or phone guy or whatever, on the line answered the phone with high, reedy voice accompanied by what sounded like a rustling chip bag.. "Brockton Bay, 25th precinct."

"Hey, law enforcement! This is Riptide."

"Who? Wait a second, you're a cape?" The chip bag rustling intensified. "Cape matters are best directed to the PRT."

"Yeah, well, I just thought you'd want to know that there's half a dozen ABB guys lying in a storehouse with a bunch of drugs on, let's see..." I checked out the window. "This is Guilford and Sixth. By the docks."

"Hold on, let me get the PRT on the…"

"Yeah, hanging up now."

Plucky could have bored holes in iron with the glare he shot me, but he still got his phone back in one piece, SIM card and all. No need to be more of a jerk than I had to be. There was nothing more to do but to hold the gangsters captive until the cops arrived and I had to run.

"Mommy, Daddy, look!" The little boy cried out as he gripped the railing on the boardwalk. He wasn't the only one staring, though. Huge pillars of water spouted out of the water like a fountain while I skated between them. I could hear more and more people taking notice of my little display. Warmth blossomed in my chest and I barked out a laugh. You guys think that's cool, huh? I dived beneath the waves, canceling the pillars, and twisted underwater, gathering speed and power with every moment.

I burst from the surface, a massive gleaming serpent of seawater twisting through the air with me and crashing in the waves. I jumped twice more, and as I fell for the last time, I leaped from the serpent at the height of it's arc and landed on the crest of a wave, falling into a deep bow as I rolled in to shore. Hoots and clapping broke out among the onlookers. Most of them, anyway, the others... I cracked a grin. I guess they'd been conditioned to fear powerful capes.

I'd do something about that.

I lay on a bed of seaweed under the waves, my eyes tracing the path of a golden drachma as it fell lazily through the water to me. The coin touched my palm, briefly becoming dry before I threw it into the water above me again, subtly guiding the currents to flip it end over end and play with the light. I had half a dozen of the coins with me, and they probably were worth a fair amount of money for the gold alon. Of course, selling them without it looking incredibly suspicious was going to be a trick all on it's own.

A lot could happen in a short while though. Today had seen seven dealers arrested, a few thousand dollars worth of drugs destroyed, and two performances on the boardwalk. Heh. The second time they'd brought out stage lights to light the serpent up. I let myself hope that maybe things would turn out alright. Hah. And maybe Zeus will join a monastery. I'll have to keep my eyes open.

Currently, my best source of news was the internet cafe in the library near the docks. I'd never been an internet guy before but, dyslexia aside, I was really warming up to it, particularly the PHO discussions about yours truly. Most just wanted to wish me well, a few were scared and a vocal minority just used me as a springboard to talk about how the government was running a kidnapping ring or something. One of the more helpful guys had suggested I try shipping an iceberg down to the middle east so they could use it as a fresh water source. I don't know if I could have done it back home, but here, it might be possible. I'd been finding it easier and easier to gently move large bodies of water and alter currents ever since I came here. Maybe with no river spirits or titans or gods, my powers are less contested?

Man, was I ever glad that I hadn't taken the Undersiders' stupid offer. I could do this! It wouldn't even be hard. I'd faced worse odds alone with a heck of a lot less experience at my back and come out fine. I didn't need a pack of Darth Vader wannabes dragging me down.

I chewed on that thought for a moment, and considered if I should be more worried about the ABB or the Empire.

Meh. I can take them.

Short chappie, but I must sleep. Next chapter is long and needs editing, so it might be a while. Once again, I'll let the first one or two people who want to beta look at it. Thanks for reading! EDIT: Special thanks to Monkey D. Funkey and Dancingrage.


	5. I Win the High Striker Game Forever

"Hey, watch the hoodie, snippy!" The giant claw shut with a *CLACK* as it passed just inches from my face.

The thing floated some ten feet off the ground and had more lobster claws than I had fingers, stingers pointing out from every surface. A massive shell near the top held the thing's body, I figured, since there were little stalk eyes poking out at me.

It was at least the third weirdest thing in the casino at the moment, right after the fifteen foot tall neon John Henry at the iridescent hammer game you usually see at fairgrounds, and the giant, anthropomorphic George Washington over by the bar. Seriously, I can respect the whole 'American History' theme they had going here, but enough is enough.

I palmed a bottle containing some sort of substance that was almost certainly illegal for me to drink and threw it at the beady little eyes that poked out from under the shell. The glass shattered and green gunk gurgled angrily from what I thought was a wound, at least until a jet of the gunk spurted out and nearly starched me to the shaggy carpet at my feet.

I dodged down a row of slot machines, hurdling overturned food trays and chairs. The thing followed in floaty pursuit, clicking and burbling like a seasick chicken as another stream of vomit-syrup shot over my head. "Hey," I huffed. "You're in the wrong place! The Beauty Pageant is next door!"

The thing burbled a sarcastic reply and I had to duck behind the neon John Henry as more gunk shot my way. "Fine, two can play at that game," I called out, sending a lance of water from the bathroom. The creature rolled in the air as the water smashed into its side, and I could see the thing's antenna look back and forth, as though it was considering its options. The clicking stopped as the beast came to some sort of crabby conclusion and charged me. The lumberjack exploded in a flurry of sparks and gas and a live wire flicked just past my ear as I dodged back. I could have practically licked the thing with how close it got to my face, and I barely held back a gag as I dodged backwards. The muscles visible between the joints of the shell strained as it prepared to gunk me from inches away.

I had it right where I wanted it.

Strength flowed through my veins, and the hammer from the high striker game slammed into the shell just above the thing's face and drove it a full three inches into the floor. The electric sign at the top of the striker went off in a dazzle of sparks and then abruptly went dark. The crab thing didn't move again. I let go of the hammer and dusted my hands off.

"Dude, that was awesome!"

My glance quirked over to see a lone guy wearing dreads and a plaid shirt emerge from behind a slot machine, phone held high. I sighed and ran a hand through my hair. Weren't people smart enough to get away from these fights? I smiled my most cheesy smile and gave him a huge thumbs up. "Hey man, glad you enjoyed the show. You could've died, sure, but overall: solid priorities."

The guy grinned sheepishly. "Hey, Riptide, I just want to say, I'm a huge fan, and..."

The only warning I got was the slightest movement near the doorway. I hit the floor as some kind of missile slammed into the slot machine behind me with enough force to shatter the screen. "I'm getting sick and tired of this matrix BS." I muttered, as I took cover behind a slot machine. The guy with the dreads bolted, and neither I, nor the new arrivals seemed to care much. I caught a glimpse from between two of the machines of the man who'd shot at me. He was on the tall side, with bulky armor and a square mask. Overall, he looked tough for a normal guy, but nothing particularly scary. He was flanked by two others, and I took a moment to size them up.

One in black had a red sun emblazoned on her chest, another had a black suit, top hat and a red mask over the face. Somewhere beyond my range of vision I could hear a fourth member doing his best to move stealthily. Great.

"Easy there, Ballistic. We don't want to kill the guy." That was Top Hat, who had stopped walking forward.

"Hey," I called out. "Crab thing wasn't a person, right? Because honestly I've been having trouble with that, and was trying not to overdo things but it's kind of hard to know how much hammer is just enough hammer."

"I was just using a stress ball, and it was just a warning shot." The armored one grumbled. "If I had wanted to kill him, he'd be dead."

"He's Riptide." the lady in black murmured. "You remember him, right?"

"Of course! The famous independent!"Red mask laughed. "A fine coincidence! Riptide, what brings you to Boston?"

"Eh, you know, got a little bored with the scenery in Brockton. New universe, all new sights." I crawled to the side of a slot machine and bit my lip. The three of them were standing still, but somewhere their fourth member was still moving. There were a few water pipes in the floor beneath me, and more in the bathroom, but I was pretty much completely exposed here.

"So, anyway, this job is more or less accomplished." Top Hat stated. "We were just supposed to come in and smash things up. You're an independent, right? You're trying to stop a robbery here, and I can respect that, so good job, you stopped us. You want to get a beer?"

I blinked. Were they... trying to recruit me? "You realize I'm a minor, right?" I stood, hoping I'd have enough warning to duck and cover if their long-range guy tried to hit me again. I needed to get eyes on the fourth guy, wherever he was. I had a nasty feeling they were just trying to set me up for him.

There was silence for a moment, and then the armored guy laughed. "Alright, how young are you really, 'cause if you're not even interested in alcohol, you're either a ridiculous square or like, a freaking kid."

"Turned 17 a few months ago. Anyway, thanks but no thanks. I've had plenty of opportunities for recruitment, but I'm in this as a hero."

"Ah, well. I think we'll manage to contain our disappointment..." I caught sight of their fourth member, who was, uh, nowhere near me.

I'd been all ready for him to leap from the ceiling at me like an old black-and-white vampire, but the fourth member was clear on the other side of the building, in the food court.

Er, that is, he was standing the wide open area of rubble that had been the food court before Crabcakes the Horror Lobster and I had trashed the place.

He had black armor with flames along the arm and legs, and a white domino mask. The look reminded me of Nico's, only he was too bulky to make it work and the expression behind the mask was less: 'tough kid' and more 'lunch didn't sit too well with me.' He threw a deft punch into empty air like he was fighting his shadow, and then just turned to look at me.

"Well, it's been fun leading you on, but the Travelers aren't recruiting." Top hat stated, and I felt something pull. Suddenly I was falling onto the rubble, and staring across the room at the hot topic fanboy, who was standing where I had moments ago. He pressed his hand to his chest, and he appeared right next to me, halfway through the punch-throwing movement.

I dodged. It was an ok punch, I guess, but Hot Topic here wasn't exactly Ares. I rolled over his fist and planted an elbow in his face, throwing him to the floor.

Pain exploded from the side of my head, and I dropped to the ground next to Hot Topic like a load of potatoes. The guy with the stress balls, I noted dimly. Who in Hades were these people?

I'd done my best to read up on all the local capes before this little trip to Boston. These 'Travelers' had the powers and coordination of a professional team, but I'd never even heard of them. I suppose they really must be travelers.

Hot Topic was on his feet again, throwing the same punch I had just dodged. I rolled to the side and rushed at Stressballs, Top Hat, and the one I hadn't come up with an insulting nickname for yet . Hot Topic could turn back time, or something, which meant that once I got away from him, there wasn't much he could do and I was back to a three person fight. I ripped water from a pipe below the carpet and caught top hat in the face with a jet of water. Two person fight.

Stressballs touched the carpet at my feet and it shot out from under me. By the time I had rolled into a crouch on the floor, the man was standing at the ready with another set of projectiles.

Styx.

I leaped to the right to dodge the assault. A dozen ball bearings ripped into the carpet beneath me and fire lanced through my shoulder. Pain overloaded every sense in my body and spots danced across my vision as I gathered my feet from under me. I stumbled, and looked to Stressballs.

The man had another dozen ball bearings in his hand. "Idiot," the armored man stated. "You're outnumbered and outgunned. Give it up."

I smiled. "You know, you're a fair bit less impressive than the last guy to tell me to stand down."

"Whatever, this is just a smash and grab. I could've killed you just now, easily, but I didn't. Count yourself lucky I'm not a murderer, and call it a day." I saw Top Hat stand up on wobbly feet, recovering from the blow I'd dealt him with the water.

Hot Topic jogged up next to his friend. "Round two, huh?"

"No, I'm just covering this guy until we're clear. Go help Trickster."

I could have kept fighting, of course. Unless Armor Guy had better reflexes than Armsmaster, he wouldn't get his shot off before I hit him with water, and Hot Topic just couldn't keep up with me in a melee. Red Mask's power was harder for me to deal with, and I still had no idea what the lady did, but if I stopped worrying about property damage I could floor everyone pretty quickly. At the end of the day, they were just mortals, and while I was already recovering from the ball bearings, Top Hat, or Trickster I guess his name was, would have those bruises for a week.

I held up my hands in surrender, and Armored guy and Hot Topic let out a collective breath and started backing away to help Trickster.

My ears roared with sound as a thin pillar of white light struck the ground amidst of the three men. A shining lady in white descended next to me, palm outstretched. She said something, I think, but with the blast still ringing in my ears it was hard to tell.

"Purity!" I called out, my voice barely audible even as I shouted, "Welcome to Boston!"

She rolled her eyes and said something, but it was still hard to tell exactly what.

I blinked. "What?" I slapped myself on the side of the head. "I'm sorry, what?"

She nodded at the lady. "We take her down, arrest them and leave them all for the police?"

Black and red stepped between us and her friends, who were all still moaning on the floor. "Hold on just a second here. I have to warn you, my power, it kills a whole lot better than it hurts. You try to take my friends in, and I-I will do what I have to, but you can still walk away." Her legs were shaking, but she held her hand out, firm and strong. A mote of fire the size of a marble blossomed from her palm and rolled towards us, billowing in size with every inch it grew closer. I got the feeling she was deliberately slowing it down and trying to keep it from growing so as not to hurt us. Hot Topic reversed his injuries and appeared upright again, looming behind his friend with a hateful expression on his face.

The ball of fire was intensely, impossibly bright, and I took a step back as I felt it burn my skin from a dozen feet away, even as a cool sensation flowed from my stomach to counteract it. I reached for the water below her feet and began to pull, but I never got the chance. Purity grabbed my arm with both hands and took to the skies with a cry of pain.

We were well above the casino within seconds, and when I looked up at Purity it was like looking directly into the sun. Pure, unadulterated yellow-white light blinded me, and felt the heat of it on my skin as she flew. I closed my eyes and looked down, blinking furiously to try to get the spots from my eyes.

"Hey, thanks for meeting like this!" I called out. "How am I doing on that whole, low-profile meeting you had in mind?" I'd managed to get a hold of her through PHO, and she'd politely explained that if I wanted to meet face-to-face I would need to travel to Boston.

"Ergh." She replied. "You come to Boston for a single day, and you still manage to find a cape fight?"

"Hey, last time I showed up in a new place, it took me all of thirty seconds to kill a man. I'm getting better!"

She didn't reply for the duration of the flight. We touched down on the roof of an abandoned skyscraper about three blocks from the casino. I could hear the sirens wailing in the distance. "So, uh, you no likey the sun thing?"

Purity's glow faded enough that I could make out her expression. She looked tired and cranky, but I suppose I was to blame for half of that. "I mean," I continued. "You really booked it out of there. I think we could have taken them."

"You are correct, more or less." She sighed. "That... sun thing, you called it. It overloaded my power. I felt... well, if I hadn't left then, I think I quite possibly might have exploded. If I had hit them I could have just as easily killed them."

"Sorry." I hesitated. "Uh, are we going to have this whole conversation here? Seems like we have a lot to talk about, and, well." It was kind of cold and windy on the rooftop, Okay?

She grimaced. "The entire reason I asked you to come to Boston to meet me was because I thought I could meet you here in my civilian identity without it being compromised," she puffed a stray hair away from her face. "Unfortunately, everyone in the city will know your face before the night is over. So yes, rooftop it is. Hopefully, the local Protectorate doesn't figure out we're out here having this chat."

"Oh, well, if that's all," I made my way to the stairwell. "I can cover for us."

"Excuse me?"

I snapped my fingers, calling on the mist. I'm not an expert with the mist by any means, but honestly it just isn't that hard to use. Purity looked over her shoulder, startled, and then turned away completely, confused.

"Forgot why you came here?" I stated. She gave a little jump as she turned back to me, blinking rapidly.

"W-What did you do to me?"

I coughed. "Nothing permanent. It's a, uh... I guess you'd say, it's a stranger ability? I can misdirect most people like that. Distract them, make them forget little things. Make them see something weird as something ordinary. I can't do anything too fancy with it; haven't practiced. But it'll cover a conversation easy enough." I shrugged. I was sort of surprised it still worked here, honestly. The Mist was Hecate's invention, and there was no Hecate here. Of course, there had been no Hecate in Alaska, either, and the mist had been doing just fine there. I suppose that the Mist was something Hecate had woven into the being of gods and demigods, and not a physical thing that Hecate made. If anything, mist manipulation was easier here. Granted, unless I specifically controlled it, it didn't do anything for me, but as far as I knew that could just have been because a teenager throwing around water just wasn't quite so strange here.

Purity was silent for a moment. "You have a stranger power. A stranger power like that, and it doesn't seem worthwhile to you to practice with?"

"It's not exactly a rare power where I come from. And most, uh, capes, know how to resist it. But I've been using it a lot lately. Helps me stay off the PRT's radar."

She raised an eyebrow. "Where you come from... Canberra?"

"Nah, I'm from New York. Although my New York is, you know, less destroyed." Something told me I'd be telling this story a lot in the weeks to come. "Look, let's get inside, and then talk, yeah?"

What I'd expected from a Neo-Nazi turned superhero, I don't know, but Purity wasn't it. We holed up in a chain coffee shop that wasn't called Starbucks, but clearly could have been, and introduced ourselves properly. Kayden Anders stood five-foot-something with curly brown hair and a tiny nose. I placed her in her late twenties, but she wore enough makeup that it was hard to be sure. She reminded me of my mom back when we were still with Gabe. Going through a lot but still putting a brave face on things. She listened patiently to my wild story and kept her poise throughout, which I appreciated. Overall, Kayden was probably the friendliest Nazi that I'd met all week.

I gave her the cliffnotes description. Hi, my name's Percy Jackson. Yes, I am from another universe. No, I didn't run into the Simurgh. Yes, there are capes back home. No, there aren't endbringers, but we have other things threatening to destroy the world. Yes, I do want to go home. No, I don't have a clue how I am going to do that.

"It's really not all that different." I stated, sipping my mocha. "Which is really surprising, actually. The biggest difference is that all the hero stuff back home was mostly kept on the down-low."

She nodded slowly. "We have contact with other universes, actually, and we, that is, scientists here on Earth Bet have theorized that they might have capes... I imagine there are parties who would be very interested in speaking with you at a greater length."

"Not you though."

"Not on that topic, no. I'm no scientist, and I'm no saint." Purity stated evenly. "I'm just a mother who is trying to make a better world for her daughter and is... rather frustrated in that goal." She paused. "I've made mistakes. I know that. I have gifts. I have potential to really change things, and I want to be sure, when everything is said and done, that I've changed the world more for better than for the worse."

A small cough escaped my lips. "Yeah. Nazi, right? I'm no Nazi fan. I really hate Brockton Bay Nazis."

"I'm not with them anymore." Purity bristled. "I was raised in the Empire, and thanks to Kaiser being a manipulative sociopath I saw the errors of their way."

"So, when you say, not with them anymore, you mean that you're still calling in favors from their healers and avoiding hitting up their operations. I've read info on you. I can see how your appearances for the last few months have been sort of heroic, but there's a reason no one knows you've left the empire. You're wearing the same costume and hitting the same kinds of targets you used to, only with less support."

Purity looked down and away, breathing in sharply. "I grew up with them, Percy. Surely you realize what that means. But, even more than that... They have leverage over me."

I leaned back in my chair and studied the ceiling. Yeah... yeah, I could see that. Styx. If Nico, or Annabeth, or Grover, or Tyson had turned out bad, could I bring them to justice? Even if I knew it was the right thing? It wasn't even that impossible. Tyson technically was a monster, and as much as I loved the guy... not all my half siblings had turned out so cuddly. Annabeth sometimes joked that if I didn't keep distracting her, she would be tyrant of her own country by now. Nico had probably been closer to the bad path than either of them with his 'king of the ghosts' shtick. What would I do, in Purity's shoes?

"Yeah, alright." I stated. "I understand that. But if we team up here, we need to make it clear that we're not working for the Empire. We've got enough trouble without the Empire's enemies thinking we're members." She hadn't said she wanted to team up with me, but she wasn't the least surprised that I had brought it up. She wasn't stupid, and there really wasn't any other reason to meet up like this. "I'm going to be hitting the Empire as hard as anyone, and if you don't want to come along for that... fine. Hopefully people figure it out."

She took a deep breath. "I don't want to have to hurt any of my friends. My powers are... fairly lethal. Also, they know my identity, so I need to be careful about reprisals on my daughter. But I won't stop you. We could also recruit someone... someone of color."

I laughed. "Which color is that? Blue? Green?"

"T-to make a statement, I mean. Diversity." She blushed. "Not that we should recruit someone just for that reason, t-they'd have to meet the same standards as anyone." She swallowed. "Uh, If the opportunity comes up, you should definitely be the one to handle recruitment."

Ironic, I thought, considering that I'm the one who's not human. "Sure. Also, you need a new cape name and costume."

Her eyebrow raised in question. "My powers are distinctive. I don't think that would fool anyone."

"Like you said, it's about making a statement. Purity is a name that just screams 'screw the brown people,' and that's like, the opposite of what we want people to think. You're trying to turn over a new leaf? Tell people that." I didn't really know where that insight had come from, except that I knew the importance of putting on a good show. It had saved my butt all the time against various monsters.

Purity grimaced. "Purity is an ideal that..." She sighed. "Very well. I am not overly concerned with public opinion, but neither do I wish to be seen as a villain." She looked up and caught my eyes. "Your stranger power. Could you use it to make people ignore my civilian life? Keeping my daughter out of this is my first priority."

"Eh... Unless I was living there and reapplying the magic every couple hours, no, I don't think so. I get wanting to keep your kid out of this though. Back home it was my mom I had to worry about. She got kidnapped when I was twelve by a guy who hated my dad."

"I'm not as worried for my child as I could be. Fortunately, capes operate on a, well, I suppose you'd call it a code of honor. There are those who break it of course, but a cape without honor soon finds himself with few friends. For this reason, the PRT at least won't be going after my child."

"The Empire must be pretty dang honorable, then, if you're okay with associating with a known enemy of them."

"They have to be. Honorable, I mean. Kaiser is well aware that his rhetoric doesn't engender much love, so he compensates by being one-hundred percent trustworthy. That said, if I move directly against him... He may try to take away my daughter through legal means. He's… her father, and with his resources I couldn't put up much of a fight, legally."

Ok, so her kid was Kaiser's as well. Those were the 'reprisals' she was worried about. More and more complications. I powered through and ignored that fact for the moment."So, you're putting a fair amount of stock in my honor then." I sipped my drink. "I've seen your face."

She paused and took a deep drink. The lady looked like she was sitting on a pile of eggshells. "I need you." She blurted. "I just had to hope you would respond in kind to a show of trust. I can't keep up my crusade alone. At best I'll knock over a few drug dens; harry the ABB a little... at worst? I'll die in some gutter with no one to take care of my Aster except for her father." She shuddered. "Being a mother has its joys, but also its terrors."

I nodded. "Powers just make everything more complicated, yeah?" My mom had lived with an abusive asshole for years, just to protect me and even that only worked for a small time. Having kids of my own was incredibly terrifying to even think about, given what they'd probably have to go through someday. "So you have a lot of reasons to stay out of the cape scene, as I see it. Why are you so set on joining up with us?"

She paused and looked out the window. "Are you a man of faith, Percy?"

"Depends what you mean by Faith." I snorted. I was religious, sure. I made prayers and offerings, but that was less an act of worship and more an act of covering-my-bases. I suppose I was about as religious as the ancient Greeks. Faith didn't really factor into it. "I have faith in my friends. I have faith in powerful people to screw things up."

She sighed. "I believe I was given these powers for a reason, Percy. I think it is my duty to use them for right. If I make mistakes, that's fine. No one is perfect, but that is no reason not to try. I fight for a better tomorrow."

I sighed and leaned back in my chair. Kayden had her baggage. Her time with the Empire had taught her to be a bigot, and I doubt she'd unlearn that lesson quickly. Kaiser must have been a decade older than her. The fact that they had a kid together spoke volumes about how messed up in the head she'd been, and how messed up she still was. If it came down to me versus her kid, she'd pick her kid every time. Kayden was desperate to be a hero, desperate to overcome the twisted knot of pain that was at her core. Playing hero wasn't what she needed, though. Kayden needed healthy relationships, a psychiatrist or three and a month at a spa. What she got was a teenage boy as a partner who was nearly as screwed up as she was.

And what I got was her. She was one of my few good options for recruitment, if I was serious about this independent hero team. Her powers were legit; as far as raw firepower went no one in Brockton Bay even came close.

Plus, I'd already talked it over with my other partner.

I extended a hand. "Welcome to the team."

She shook my hand and quirked an eyebrow. "Do two people constitute a team?"

I smiled. "It's a school day, so only I could come. I'll handle introductions when we get back."


	6. I Try to Run Away

Two days earlier:

I sat at the library computer and sipped my Coke. Back home, using the internet was like smearing yourself with bacon grease and going for a dip in piranha infested water. Here? It sort of rocked. I'd just completed my third boardwalk performance, and the videos were 'going viral,' as internet users liked to say. I'd made an account, even if it was just a throwaway to get Purity's attention.

I wanted to do big things to this universe while I was here. Maybe it was just a way to distract myself from the awful fact that I had no clue how to get home, I don't know, but I'd been prepping to save the world since I was twelve and I sure didn't see a reason to stop now. So far, I'd done jack squat. Sure, a few of the ABB weren't walking quite so lightly, and sure, I had a vague idea of a merchants group I could hit, but everything I'd done so far? I think the term is sandbagging. Beating up mortals was fun in its own way, but there were bigger fish to fry.

Overall, there wasn't much I could do for the moment other than research. Research, which meant reading, which would make my head hurt. Still, it had to be done. I wasn't going to bumrush the Slaughterhouse Nine without at least reading their wikipedia articles. Not for the last time I wished I had Annabeth with me. Her laptop could automatically translate anything on the web into ancient Greek, and plus, she was always better at this crap. Sure, I can improvise my way out of Tartarus, but give me a massive list of targets with no clear approach and I flounder. Annabeth would probably already be in talks with the Triumvirate about the proper approach to kill the Endbringers. Me? My current plan was: 'beat up bad guys until we get word on how to go home.'

A van screeched to a halt just in front of the library, and I looked up sharply. I'd chosen my seat because I was well away from most of the windows, on the off chance someone figured out my location, but even from my position I could make out a small crowd of young men wearing ABB colors pouring out of a van. I bit the inside of my cheek. The ABB. How exactly they'd found me, I couldn't tell, but unless this was the ABB's book club I sure couldn't think of any other reason for ten of them to show up at a public library. The few library patrons that had looked up were visibly distressed but most people were still browsing. Really, I was perfectly fine with throwing down against as many of the ABB as wanted to come at me, Lung included, but I didn't want to fight with this many potential hostages. Another thing I missed about home: the monsters usually left the mortals out of it.

The gang members were still filing out of the vans when a swarm of roaches, flies, and spiders exploded from the floorboards and walls. That got everyone's attention. I grimaced. Had Lung gotten a bug controller or something? Sure enough, the bugs were definitely moving with a human intelligence directing them. They layered themselves over every surface, again and again, spelling out the same message with their bodies:

LUNG. LEAVE. BACK DOOR.

The crowd reacted by hurriedly and orderly making their way to the back of the building. A few pushed and shoved, but most helped others along and moved without much friction. I wondered if they did 'cape fight' drills here just like the fire drills back home. I took a long drink from my Coke as the building emptied and started tapping a beat on my knee. The bugs retreated for the most part, except for a small number who danced frantically on the table in front of me, trying to direct me to leave. I saw another group gathering at the doorway Lung was about to walk through, and I began squishing them methodically. The absolute last thing I needed here was for a new cape to get involved.

The doors flew open and a carpet of dull smoke rolled in across the floor, Lung eating up the distance between us with steady, confident strides. He was dressed only in loose canvas pants and a hideous metal mask, showing off a muscular torso riddled with old scars and tattoos. Smoke wisped off of him as he walked, flowing into a cape of gray air. The bugs retreated from him, and I let out a small breath. Good. Bug controller had figured it out. "Riptide," Lung called out, his voice low and hard. "You've insulted me by operating within my territory without my permission, you've inconvenienced me by the destruction of my property, and all this," His voice twisted with rage. "All this you did after killing my subordinate." Fire pulsed from his hand. "Perhaps, you thought that you could get away with this, because others have killed my subordinates in the past and lived. Miss Militia. Hookwolf." He pointed at me. "But you, you are alone. You are traceable. You," He pointed at me. "You are already dead."

The Coke fizzed over my tongue as I sipped, savoring the taste. The can clinked as I set it down on the table. "Hey," I stated. "Gotta say, death isn't so bad so-"

I hit the ground hard as I dove under a hail of bullets that cut through the table I'd been sitting at half a heartbeat earlier. The gunmen stationed just outside the windows stopped firing, but I wasn't so foolish as to raise my head to see if they'd left. My table had been visible from only two of the windows, but that had been enough.

Lung chasing me down had been inevitable ever since I killed his number two. There was no way a guy with a rep and ego like Lung's would let a dead subordinate slide. I figured that same ego would make him try to kill me in person. So far, I was batting .500. His ego demanded he be there in person, but if it was a gunman that got the last shot off, it didn't matter much.

Of course, I hadn't expected he'd come after me so soon, either. He'd tracked me despite the mist, somehow, which was scary as all Hades. The rules here weren't the same, and I'd been counting on the magic to cover up my weaknesses. Maybe I'd been overconfident. Either way, it didn't matter much. If there was one situation I knew how to handle, it was the sort of situation I hadn't been expecting.

On the off-chance that Lung really did have extra-powerful senses like PHO thought he did, I hadn't fled with the other people in the library. People died when Lung fought, and I wasn't much good at avoiding collateral damage myself. Lung jumping me in a crowd full of civilians wasn't the worst case scenario, but it was close. I'd give them a few seconds head start and then break out of here myself. It was more of an afterthought than anything, but bug-controller would probably get targeted if I just split and ran after the warning. I didn't want Bug Guy's first action as a hero to earn him Lung's ire.

Footsteps pounded the floor as more of the ABB trooped in, but I didn't sit around to watch. My feet stumbled in a half-running, half-crawling motion as I dodged behind a row of bookcases. All around me, books exploded off of the shelves as the ABB opened fire. "Hey!" I called out. "This is a library! Keep it down!"

I might have been hit a couple times, but I couldn't afford to take notice. Sure, I would die to gunfire eventually if I just stood there in the open like a chump, but at the moment the name of the game was 'Don't get turned into lunch by the fire-breathing monster.' I mean, sure, big, ugly, and fire breathing wasn't anything new to me, but with no sword and no convenient ocean/lake/river nearby, I wasn't confident I could kill him fast enough that his regeneration wouldn't kick in. Also, going two-for-two on fatalities in the cape fights I'd been in really wasn't a great heroic debut.

The strategy was simple: Run like Hades until the Protectorate showed up. Lung got stronger the more he fought, which meant that by the time the Protectorate showed up to fight him, he was already way too tough to put down. I figured if I could avoid fighting him, he'd stay small and when Armsmaster showed up we could kick him on his scaly ass. Alternately, when Armsmaster and the others didn't show up, I could just continue running until I found water.

In the rear of the library stood my target: one of those nice steel and glass spiraling staircase thingies. I dashed down the aisle, and as I crossed a gap in the shelves I noted four or five guys in ABB colors walking in from the back of the building, pulling up their weapons as they caught sight of me. My heart threatened to pound out of my chest as I ran, adrenaline running hot. I took a deep breath. "Parkour!" I leaped from the aisle to about halfway up the staircase, reached out with one hand, caught the pole in the center of the staircase and swung into a run. The gunfire clipped at my heels and I caught myself laughing like an idiot.

"Incompetents!" Lung's voice rang up the staircase as the ABB trooped after me in single file. The first whose head came into view got a copy of Atlas Shrugged to the forehead and went down cursing. The second got a face-full of The Fountainhead and stumbled onto the second floor in a daze. The third got Dragons of the Dwarven Depths right between the eyes and just stood there, stunned. Presumably he'd been expecting something more high-brow.

The bookcase itself was one of those overbuilt wooden pegboard creations that weighed a ton and probably could have doubled as a bomb shelter in a pinch. I grabbed hold of it, heaved, and the whole mess - books, bookcase, and Dewey Decimal system - came falling earthward. Letting go, I dashed ahead of the crashing wave and kicked a fourth Azn Bad Boy in the face as he became visible. The shelves crashed over the low fence that had been built around the landing and came apart, wood and steel splintering into so much kindling.

The barricaded staircase had bought me seconds at best. There were staircases at each side of the building. I had barricaded one, Lung's head was emerging from another at the other end of the building, and ABB members were piling out of the other two. My options were dwindling. My eyes darted to the window, but there were still way too many people milling about, getting into cars. I could charge either of the groups of gang members, or Lung. However, the only way I was getting away from here without a prolonged fight was through a window, which meant the front of the building. Which meant Lung.

Well, so much for the 'do not confront Lung directly until the Protectorate arrives' plan. Lung roared and ran at me, already faster and stronger than any mortal opponent I'd met so far. A breath in, a breath out. Nowhere to run. I bounced on my heels and charged Lung. The heat from his claw grazed my face as he struck out at me, but I knocked his hand upward with my forearm and stomped on his knee.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and Lung, even without fully transforming, was as big as any human out there. He crashed to the floor with a howl of pain, and I tore off toward the front of the building. I closed my eyes as I tumbled through the glass, landing in a roll on the pavement as shards of glass shattered around me.

The street had been largely abandoned, which, you know, made sense, considering the giant fire-breathing monster, but it still felt weird to me. Usually civilians steered clear of fights between demigods and monsters, but mortals here were understandably more practiced in the art of making themselves scarce. All of which to say that although the fight hadn't started more than a minute ago, I was pretty much wide in the open as I hoofed it down toward the bay. I don't mean to brag, but I'm pretty sure I could leave an olympic sprinter in the dust. Within half a minute I was already back in the less-abandoned streets.

I sighed. The problem with trying to keep civilians out of your grudge match with a giant lizard is that civilians are freaking everywhere. I dodged down an alleyway and drew on the mist as I ran. By the time I emerged on the next street over, no one gave me a second look.

I almost stepped on the ladybugs crawling at my feet. There must have been hundreds of the little red bugs, drawing themselves to form words on the pavement. Right, the bug-controller again. Whoever he was, he must have had a wicked long range to control bugs both here and at the library a whole city block away.

'What are you thinking? Leave! Don't draw Lung here.' I guess it doesn't make sense to say it, but the bugs seemed to have a pretty urgent tone.

I blinked, then looked up, trying to get my bearings. Directly across the road from me was a three-story piece of decrepit city architecture with a big sign out front reading 'Winslow High'.

Ah, shit.

Two large vans screamed to a halt just in front of the school, and Lung, along with a dozen of his cronies, poured out.

I turned to run, but before I could, a third van blocked off the alley I had just come through. I turned back to Lung. "You'd seriously start a fight right outside a school? What, did you run out of puppies to torture or something?"

Lung smiled. I mean, I think he did. He still had the mask on, but boy, did his voice sound like he was smiling. "You were the one that chose this ground, Riptide. I won't allow you to just hide behind children."

I sighed. Anger wasn't my friend here. If I could talk him down, it would be best for everything. "Lung, we're both men of power. You know what happens if this fight gets out of control. That's how you get a kill order, Lung, and even you know better than to bring down that kind of heat." I mean, honestly I wasn't sure. I had no idea if Lung did know better; by all accounts he was kind of nuts. I also wasn't privy to how kill orders got issued, but they seemed like they were reserved for the puppy-eating, moon-blow-upping sorts of villains. Where Lung fell on that scale, I had no idea, but I figured I was about to find out in a real hurry. "Let's just take this fight somewhere else."

I got the idea that he'd just keep coming after me, damn the consequences, and that was annoying. If that was how things were going to be, I pretty much had to kill him, sooner or later, and better sooner than later. For the first time since I'd come to this world I felt real anger boiling up inside of me. It wasn't just an anger at Lung, or at the city, or even at my own situation. I was just pissed at everything and everyone. Nothing ever changed. Everywhere I went was just ruled by whoever was the biggest bully on the block, whoever could play the system the best. It was all the same, whether it was this world, my world, or the schools I'd escaped from back in the day. I made my mind up right then and there that if I had to kill the bastard, I might as well do it right here and now. If the PRT came down on me for it, well, to Hades with them. Lung was willing to risk a buttload of innocents over his own ego, and in my book that was enough.

" I do not bargain with dead men, Riptide." Lung laughed, "You will make a fine example." His gunmen opened fire as he rushed me.

I was already in motion as the guns went off. I might have been hit a few times, I'm not sure. But I stayed alive for a whole second, and that's all I needed. Water exploded from a hydrant next to the school, sweeping all the gang members up in a surging torrent.

I threw my arm back, sweeping the wave into Lung's back. Big and strong as he already was, he couldn't disobey simple physics, and the water lifted him off his feet and into the air. The fire in my gut burned bright, exultant in the moment.

The water formed a whirlpool in the middle of the street, a tiny storm surge to a my own personal hurricane. Lung floated helplessly at the center of it, buffeted from every angle by bullets of water that burst from every angle, punching holes in him. He gasped for air, but only water filled his lungs. It was the single most taxing thing I'd ever done with my water, and I could feel the strength running from me in a river.

It wasn't enough.

Even as Lung bled freely into the water, he was changing. The wounds closed over with silver scales, a tail grew from Lung's elongated spine, and massive claws formed where the man's fingers had been. I reached into the surge and grabbed the face of his mask. He came free with a gasp, but it was a short lived relief, as I grabbed him by the back of his head and slammed his face into the pavement over and over again. The mask shattered at the second impact, and the third came up bloody. Lung flailed, growing stronger by the moment, but still not as strong as me yet. Not strong enough to break free from me, in any case.

It still wasn't enough.

A scream filled my lungs as a lance of fire cut out at my side, but I didn't stop. I couldn't stop. The instant I did was the instant the tempo of this fight reversed and I effectively lost. I couldn't let that happen.

But then, without my permission, it happened anyway.

Leverage, along with the advantage in strength I'd started the fight with, had been enough for a while. I had his right arm locked up with one hand and I slammed his face into the curb with my other. His arm started getting too big for my wrist to fit around and I dug my fingers in ever harder, driving them into the flesh underneath the scales, grabbing his tendons directly. As the arm got longer I rose and instead of slamming his face into the curb I just kicked the back of his head in over and over again, bracing against his arm. If we'd been normal humans, I don't think he ever could have broken the lock I'd put his right arm in. As it was, once Lung's clawed arm found purchase on the ground he simply used it to throw himself over onto his side and swipe at me. That his right arm tore out of its socket in the process seemed to barely inconvenience him.

I jerked out of reach of his claw and threw a jet of water into his face. The jet knocked Lung back a bit, but mostly it just blanketed the area in a thin layer of steam. "Styx." The curse escaped my lips as I turned and beat a hasty retreat.

Just because I couldn't see through the fog I'd thrown up didn't mean that Lung couldn't. I could clear the fog, probably, if I focused for a second, but that was a second more than I had to spare before Lung barreled out of the fog cloud, a steaming, bleeding, fiery mess.

Lung. The guy was about the size of a Mack truck already, and while his arm hadn't fully healed up, it was hard to see what impact I had had on the guy. His huge, metallic muzzle flashed in what I think was supposed to be a grin, and a wave of heat washed over me. Lung took a slow, measured step forward.

I didn't have any witty comeback. I just got ready to run. I'd had one good shot at him and I'd blown it. I didn't know whether or not I could outpace Lung like this, but it was worth a shot. He sure wasn't getting back into his van, as big as he was now.

But then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw him. Some stupid kid frozen against the side of a car, clutching a cell phone, directly behind me. If I ran, Lung would barrel past me straight through the car, the kid... Hades, he'd probably make it into a classroom before he stopped.

Lung bore down on me and I drew back my fist. My back was against a wall now. I couldn't run. I grimaced. Guess that meant I had to kick his ass.


	7. An Accident, I Swear

The way I saw it, cheap shots were the only ones worth taking. In situations like the sort I seem to keep finding myself in, you either learn not to play nice, or you don't learn anything because you're dead. Of course, I can't really say that for sure. I've definitely survived a whole lot of fights I had no business surviving, but maybe I would've come out fine even without playing dirty.

Guess I'd just have to live with never finding out.

I shot a thin layer of water away from me over the surface of the ground as Lung, already as big as an elephant, charged me. They call semi trucks eighteen wheelers because they're trucks so big that they need eighteen wheels to support their weight, but all those wheels serve another important function: friction. It's hard to handle something as big and as fast as a semi without a lot of contact with the road. Now, you may not think that a general knowledge of trucker physics gleaned from your ex-stepdad's poker buddies would come up in a fight with a giant flaming gang leader, but uh, you'd be surprised, I guess.

See, Lung was about the size and shape of a semi-truck tractor at the moment, and every step he made as he bounded forward left huge dinosaur tracks in the pavement. So when he tried to take a bounding leap toward me and stepped on my thin sheet of rushing water, he suddenly found that the amount of friction between him and the ground was somewhere south of zero. For the second time that day, Lung, terror to Brocktonites everywhere, faceplanted hard. Last time he'd nearly toppled a bookcase on top of himself. This time his face left a smoking crater.

It gave me all the time I needed. I ripped more water from the hydrant and caught the kid who had frozen behind me, throwing him into the school. How much being inside of the building would really help him if Lung and I kept going, I don't know. Hopefully it would at least shake him out of panic mode.

Lung, naturally, didn't have the good grace to stay down, and he came up with a roar that rattled the windows of the buildings around me, hot asphalt dripping from his shoulders. I breathed deeply and ripped one of those 'School X-ing' signs from the road, twirling it to get a feel for its balance. The thing was unwieldy and nearly a foot longer than I was tall, but it was the closest thing to a real weapon that I could lay hands on. With the tip as warped and bent as it was from coming out of the ground, I figured it made a half-way decent spear.

Fire-Breath approached me more slowly this time, careful of his footing, moving like a boxer despite his inhuman frame. He learned his lesson. I smirked, and a short laugh escaped me.

Lung paused and cocked his head at me.

"I was just thinking, you learned your lesson about trying to rush right at me, and then I thought, 'hey, this is a school, right? That's what you're supposed to do here!' Learning!" I shook my head. "Now that I got you listening though, here's another snippet of wisdom: Don't push this. I don't know who you think you are, Lung, but whoever you've fought before, whoever you've killed, whatever you've endured... you've clearly never messed with me."

I ceased from twirling the sign, and slammed it to the ground, sinking the steel tip into the pavement. "Maybe I can't kill you right here, right now, but so what? I can clearly leave anytime I want to, and if you piss me off enough, your little empire is driftwood. You control the docks, Lung?" I felt cold settle deep within my chest. "I rule the ocean, and every cent your territory earns passes through my domain. You really want to go all out? You really want no holds barred? Because if it comes to that, the next time you go within spitting distance of the bay I'll drag you to the bottom of the ocean and leave you there. How long will it be before your power wears off and you pop like a grape? Take a good long minute here, Lung, and think about whether you want to push this."

Lung growled and a lance of fire shot out at me, only to get caught by a tendril of my water and explode into so much steam. He came at me through the steam, wreathed in fire and vapor. I barely jumped clear as a claw the size of my torso came within a hair of mauling me. The problem with jumping clear, though, is that for the brief second you're airborne, you're pretty much totally vulnerable. A second lance of fire caught me in the face and I rolled backwards. I landed and blocked a third lance with what little water I had on hand. Hot steam billowed out from the impact again, and Lung rose from it, fifteen feet of steel and fire. He fell on me, a volcanic avalanche of raw, deafening fury. The pavement itself shifted under my feet, going soft as I tried to draw myself into a decent stance. He was a tenth of a second from crushing me before I shoved the street-sign up his throat.

The steel pole stuck straight up into Lung's Larynx and through the back of his neck. The brute choked, but I didn't even have time for a cocky smirk before he backhanded me into a car clear across the street. Growing still larger with every passing moment, Lung gagged where he stood. The people of PHO had been pretty sure Lung couldn't actually drown, but maybe he had to ramp up a bit before that stuff didn't effect him at all. The corner of my mouth twisted into a smirk as I wiped a tiny smear of blood from it. Bastard had finally managed to tag me.

I sighed. There was nothing for it; I'd have to run. I'd made a good show, but he wasn't getting any weaker, and every second we fought here was just another chance for things to get out of control. Next time he hit me I might land in someone's geometry class and mess up their proofs or something. My hand flicked to my pocket again and I groaned inwardly. Man, did I miss my shiny sword of death-to-monsters-ness just then. Still, escaping to the bay wouldn't be hard. Lung wasn't like the protectorate, with a huge network of officers and speedsters to harry me as I ran. If he tried to follow me I could just trip him again.

Lung coughed molten steel onto the sidewalk, and I took in a breath. Every instinct in me screamed to just have another go at him, to teach him to respect me... But I could teach him that later. I got ready to run.

Then the darndest thing happened.

Lung, twenty feet tall and full of muscles, collapsed in the middle of the street.

He didn't get up.

Huh.


End file.
